Security

Both the hacking supergroup calling itself Lulz Security and researchers fighting against it have borrowed tactics from WikiLeaks in recent days, dumping sensitive information onto the internet for others to comb through. Read more

The news was dominated on Wednesday by reports of the arrest of a suspected British teenage computer hacker, in connection with a range of security breaches including attacks on the website of the CIA and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, writes John Reid, a former British cabinet minister and co-author of ‘Cyber Doctrine’ published later this month. We can expect many more such events as our security agencies struggle to address the challenges of cyberspace.

A couple of months ago, the computer systems of Nonghyup, a large South Korean bank, crashed spectacularly, leaving thousands of customers stranded for several days. It never made headline news in the west. But perhaps it should.

The South Korean military believe the source of the crash was a carefully planned attack by North Korea, which used an infected laptop to infiltrate the banking system, to sow consumer panic. And while Pyongyang has denied the charges, the episode is thought-provoking for investors, particularly given this week’s excitement about the computing “cloud”. Read more

On the eve of the E3 video game trade show, Nintendo has admitted that its network is also vulnerable to hackers playing games. Sony has yet to restore fully the PlayStation Network after it was crippled by hackers in April, but the cyber break-in at one of Nintendo’s US web servers seems much less serious. Read more

It was appropriate that the day that Google was unveiling details of a new Gmail hacking attack, an august group of politicians and business leaders gathered in London, at a security summit organised by the EastWest Institute, to tell each other that, well, cyber security is a big problem. Read more

There has been an increasing amount of talk from high places, including the White House, about the urgent need for international cooperation on cybersecurity. But a proposal to be released tomorrow calling for specific US-China steps shows, more than anything, how far we have to go. Read more

Many challenged my grim assessment early last year, when I called for America to develop a new strategy to address the kinds of cyberattacks that could cripple our nation’s infrastructure, writes Mike McConnell, director of the National Security Agency in the Clinton administration.

If there were a cyberwar, I told Congress, we would lose. The unfortunate truth is that, a year later, we are no better prepared – and the stakes have risen. Read more

Multiple members of the US Congress fired off letters to Apple this week about reports that iPhones not only store data about their owners whereabouts but leave unencrypted copies of the information on users’ main computers. Read more

This seems to be the week of the big media guys beating up the little guys and the little guys fighting back. On Monday, the Motion Picture Association of America sued the new DVD streaming service Zediva. On Tuesday, Sony said its PlayStation Network had suffered outages as a result of attacks by the Anonymous group of hackers. On Wednesday, Google said it had removed an app for the Grooveshark music streaming service from the Android Market. Read more

Google has announced a new extension to its Chrome web browser that will allow users to block ‘content farms’ – sites with little or low-quality content – from their web searches. The extension also sends information on the blocked site back to Google, which will then use the feedback in its search rankings.

Microsoft says it is still considering whether to offer Office on Apple’s App store for its Mac computers, says AllThingsDigital.

Mashable reports that the Motion Picture Association of America, working with Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, has cracked down on the file-sharing of pirated films and TV programmes by shutting down 12 “torrent” websites in the US and at least 39 sites abroad by filing copyright violation complaints with the sites’ hosting providers.

Twitter is set to more than triple its advertising revenue to $150m this year as more companies use it to spread marketing messages, according to Bloomberg, with ad sales set to hit $250m by 2012.

In a move that could let its users avoid having their online actions monitored, Mozilla Corp is planning to add a “do-not-track” feature to its Firefox browser, the Wall Street Journal reports. The announcement would make Firefox the first Web browser to heed the Federal Trade Commission’s call for the development of a do-not-track system.

Normally in the business of making others embarrassed, Nick Denton’s Gawker Media empire had some awkward explaining to do itself on Monday after hackers breached the database containing hundreds of thousands of usernames and passwords that people used to comment on the sites in the network.

Gawker executives, who had initially denied the breach, were forced to reverse course and apologise after the hackers posted a large batch of the passwords online. The intruders also took Gawker’s own source code and perused internal chats and employee e-mails, which in turn provided log-in credentials for Google Apps, taking a similar trajectory to the 2009 electronic break-in at Twitter that unearthed sensitive financial information. Read more

The version of Google’s Android operating system for smartphones due out in a few weeks can be used with specialised chips to authenticate the precise location of the mobile devices, paving the way for secure payments at physical stores, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said Monday.

Because the Near-Field Communication chips can store and exchange precise data about the phones, well beyond ordinary GPS, their adoption will allow phone owners to tap their gadgets against a physical surface to confirm their presence and identity, Mr Schmidt said. Read more

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About the authors

Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.

Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 25 years. He reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby from 2004 to 2013, before returning to London, where he is now lead writer of the #techFT daily newsletter.

Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and moved from London to join the team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers personal tech and the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.

Hannah Kuchler writes about technology and Silicon Valley from the FT's San Francisco bureau. She covers social media including Facebook and Twitter and the dark and mysterious world of cybersecurity. Hannah has worked for the FT in London, Hong Kong and New York, reporting on everything from British politics to the Chinese internet.